Wednesday, 25 March 2015

I made the whole second round of chains with four picots… and there should have been three!

"snip, snip, snip"

Start again.

Those chains felt really tight with only three picots but I carried on as written. Now the third row of chains and rings frill a bit. This makes me think Mr. Fikkert and I don't tat the same (ie. have a different tension). But I'll keep going and see how I get on.

Sunday, 22 March 2015

I recently got a book from Ben Fikkert… in fact I now own two of his books but had yet to tat anything from them. So I decided I'd start with this small oval doily.

The centre construction is quite interesting… it's working out a bit tight for me at the moment but I will persevere. I like the idea of an oval doily for a change. He has some lovely larger ones too which I would like to tackle eventually but for now I'll start with this small one and see how his patterns work out for me.

Tuesday, 17 March 2015

Today is Saint Patrick's day… a good occasion to re-visit my trio of clover patterns (available on my patterns page, tab above). I don't know why I hadn't thought to make a "lucky one" with four leaves before.

Top left was my first try with four leaves but although it was flattened by the scan, this was just too tight with the original stitch count on the centre ring and it frilled a lot. Second version, top right, has an inside ring of 2-2-2-2-2-2-2 (7 picots separated by 2 ds) and that works well. Bottom left is the original with three leaves. But my favourite is still the bottom right one, made without a centre ring. I think the leaves on that one have the best shape. But if you were to make that one with four leaves, the space in the centre would end up too big so I think it's best with three leaves.

I think I'll play with this a bit more to improve the shape of the leaf of the version with a centre ring. Perhaps by just making the leaf ring larger and the chains around it shorter, this will give it a shape more to my liking.

I visited Craftree yesterday. I must admit I've not been a very frequent visitor since the move over from In Tatters (I miss the old website). There I found this pattern for a little heart by Brintinpa (can be found under the "Members Patterns" section. It's called "Kiss Curl Heart"… I rather like the name!

On the bottom version, I changed the small ring to a SCMR which helps give more of a pointy shape.

So if you need a really quick little motif to send on a card to someone, I think this is great. My thanks to the designer. It's also good practice to make a nice long smooth chain! You have to make sure each ds is exactly the same height as the one before if you want the curve to be really smooth. Mine are not perfect by any means… and I didn't do a very good job of sewing ends in either! It's good that there's always room for improvement… keeps you on your toes. :-)

Friday, 13 March 2015

Out shopping with my daughter yesterday, we spotted this very pretty version of grape hyacinth (Muscari). I have the darker purpley blue ones in my garden but we both though this pale blue version with frilly edges was lovely. I bought a pot for our garden and one for my mother-in-law.

It's resting on one of my favourite small mats,

a design by Jan Stawasz

I like to see the gradation of colour

as the flowers open…

I'm still only making very slow progress on this other Jan Stawasz piece. The way I attached the individual motifs on the diagonal rather than square means I'd have to add quite a few to get to the right shape, if I decided to go with the same orientation as the original, before I can make a border.

I was not actually planning to make this as big as the one in the book. So I may carry on with it orientated the other way and improvise slightly for the border. In the above photo, the small motifs are square to the border. The way I was making it, the small motifs are diamonds. I think it might work anyway.

I think I'll make the next round of larger, eight-sided motifs and then re-assess the situation. Even then it will work out fairly big I think.

I particularly like the big medallions in this.

Lastly, I'm sad to report that the sleeve of my red crochet cardigan IS NOT WORKING OUT!! (can you tell I'm getting a bit frustrated with it?) Still, I have been wearing it sleeveless and it's quite nice that way too. But I do want it with sleeves. I'll get there eventually.

Wednesday, 4 March 2015

I've not been very productive in the tatting department lately. I'm still busy working on garments. But when I saw Ninetta's post about her square design, I had to make it. She has a great pictorial about it on her blog.

Here's an "in-progress" photo. I got to the end of the first part of her pictorial:

It's not a lot of tatting to show for, is it?!

Still… hopefully, it's better than none.

There's probably too much contrast between my two thread colours but I will complete this first one as is and then I'll see about making it again with closer colours.

Oh, and the sleeves of my red cardigan are proving challenging!! I remade the first sleeve (third time) and it's still not quite right. Grrr….